If You Could Read My Mind
by Jilly-chan
Summary: Yuri/AU! Love is something that Sally holds on a pedestal; although, Kozue (Utena) has been showing her otherwise. When Noin comes back to into Sally's life, will things change? Written as a gift for Alithea *smile*


If You Could Read My Mind  
  
By Jillian Storm  
  
(Disclaimer: Various anime series originated these characters. Gordon Lightfoot, ever the bard, provided the lyrics. The rest-well, that's my fault!)  
  
dedicated with much love and affection to Alithea  
  
  
  
If you could read my mind love  
  
What a tale my thoughts could tell  
  
Just like an old time movie  
  
'Bout a ghost from a wishing well  
  
In a castle dark or a fortress strong  
  
With chains upon my feet  
  
You know that ghost is me  
  
And I will never be set free  
  
As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see  
  
Sally:  
  
Three years ago, I would never have imagined that we would be sitting together as we did that day. The sunlight filtering in through the window emphasizing the warm atmosphere of the family owned restaurant just down the block from where Kozue and I lived. The restaurant where the front door sign read, "Pay for food . . . or work for it." After one of our quarrels, I had discovered the place as I tried to escape from the dark cold of the street. The food was good and the sign was genuine. I didn't have a dime on me and after washing dishes for an hour I was ready to go home and try again.  
  
We were an odd triangle.  
  
First there was me, of course. I wasted my days doing research for a hospital doctor when I should have really been a doctor myself. I wasted my money when I should have been saving it for school. But I was relatively happy at this point in my life. Kozue and I were starting to feel comfortable again. It had been rough going after the initial rapture evaporated. And a great deal of that, truly, was my own fault. Kozue reminded me that I loved women, but she wasn't the woman I loved. I found myself continually trying to buy and work for love.  
  
Kozue was there as well, sitting next to me. I could feel her bare knee pressed against my own. It was a little game she would play, reminding me that she was there. For my part, I tried not to react in anyway. That was how our relationship had started. One dull evening when I had gotten drunk enough to forget my part of the equation. Whatever satisfaction I had found in reacting was temporary. Temporary compared to the permanent reaction I felt fluttering through my system as I lifted my eyes to see our other companion.  
  
Lucrezia Noin. She had come back home after an overseas tour reporting on our embassies overseas. She was married to her work, reporting on whatever cause or agenda impacted our unsuspecting populace. Even when she took a vacation she was searching for an angle. And my childhood friend seldom found her path crossing mine. Moment like this one were stunning and rare.  
  
Stunning because the years had only made her more lovely. More charming.  
  
Her hair untrimmed from the previous journey, spun around her far cheek in soft waves. Her fingers continually wrapped around and tapped against her glass, her right hand. Obviously feeling unusual without a writing utensil curled in them.  
  
"I don't quite understand your sort of writing, " Kozue was saying as I daydreamed in the warm light. "So analytical to provide truth through facts . . . rather than feelings. For my poetry, feelings are everything. Next to the images that come with them."  
  
I was grateful for Kozue, she hadn't let the conversation lax longer than what was comfortable. But the fire in my gut was anxiously absorbing every straight thought I might form. I wanted to ask Luce where she'd been, who she'd met and if she'd found that romantic void yet. The one she claimed she didn't have. The need she said she didn't crave. To well, I could remember her laughing in the airport echoing from all those years ago, "I don't need anyone, Sal. There's nothing a lover could offer me that I wouldn't lose too much in return. I don't think anyone could make an offer that might satisfy me. I need independence." And her nose had crinkled over her excuses with what she thought was a shared joke. I had never taken a lover much less accepted a date as long as she had known me. We were two independent women. And that was what I loved about her. That was why I had let her go.  
  
But Luce's opinions were wrong, at least when applied to my own life. What other lovers offered me after that day didn't cause me to lose anything. I still loved her completely, and her only.  
  
Not that she would have the slightest idea. I never let her know. I never let her in. As she needed her independence, then I would let her have it.  
  
If I could read your mind love  
  
What a tale your thoughts could tell  
  
Just like a paperback novel  
  
The kind that drugstores sell  
  
When you reach the part where the heartaches come  
  
The hero would be me  
  
But heroes often fail  
  
And you won't read that book again  
  
Because the ending's just too hard to take  
  
I have this dream about her. Only she's younger, still the college girl that I remember better. The girl who had convinced me that I had found someone with a beauty clearest to me, and me alone. Sure, others had been attracted her unusually soulful eyes. The sort that make you ask, "What's wrong?" and realize that after you've sunk into them that everything is suddenly perfectly right. I myself was often captivated by the way she would lean across the table with her arms entwined and propped so that she balanced one cheek against them. Letting her smile stretch mostly to the other side, crooked and inviting.  
  
She wasn't sitting like that at the dinner. Instead, she was leaning back against the seat. Every once and a while glancing out the window to the street. What had changed her in three years?  
  
In the dream, the inviting smile pulls me in toward it. Until I'm near enough to feel her breathing quicken. And I take my hand to run fingers down that smoothed cheek as her lips stop smiling and meet my own.  
  
"Right, Sally?"  
  
I turned to face the smaller woman, she's arched one eyebrow letting me know that I've been caught daydreaming again. She knows what I'm thinking about Luce. Even after my more intimate encounters with Kozue, I shamelessly reminisced about my first love. Kozue always listening intently, saying she wasn't jealous. That she if anything she might envy how I maintained such a depth of emotion. The sort of emotion that fueled poetry.  
  
The least I could do for Kozue was try to inspire her. I couldn't offer her much else that would last forever. One morning, I had found her still at the front table. Her forehead pressed against the pile of scratched lines as she'd succumb to sitting on the floor. Both of her arms stretched awkwardly in front of her. The left twirling a pen.  
  
"What are you doing? Did you sleep at all?" I had shook my head in amazement.  
  
"Stop laughing at me. I'm trying to be iambic."  
  
Kozue made me laugh. She was easy going and seemingly unbreakable. We'd started living together for convenience sake; although, it meant nothing else. She was like a cat, leaving for several days at a time and when she came back-looking a little used. I'd watch her more closely then, but she'd narrow her eyes and say, "I'm not going to critique anything you're doing or not doing right now because you're so wonderful." The sarcasm, uniquely Kozue, worked to stop my maternal instinct every time.  
  
She was right. I was no better. I had used and wasted love.  
  
In the end, I really had nothing to offer.  
  
And if I pretended to offer anything to Lucrezia, then wouldn't it be as she had said? That she would be losing so much more?  
  
I'd walk away like a movie star  
  
A movie queen to play the scene  
  
Of bringing all the good things out in me  
  
But for now love, let's be real  
  
* I never thought I could act this way *  
  
And I've got to say that I just don't get it  
  
I don't know where we went wrong  
  
But the feelin's gone  
  
And I just can't get it back  
  
She's gone back to see her parents for the evening. They moved just a few miles away from the house that I remember being hers. I didn't act quickly enough to pay her bill. She had simply smiled, with that endearing crinkle in her nose, saying, "Pay me back later." A later that would haunt me as Kozue and I kicked our heels through the autumn leaves. When the sun was gone, the chilly promise began to return and Kozue wrapped herself around my arm encouraging warmth between us.  
  
"So this is the woman you've loved all this time." Her voice unguarded and carrying her familiar mocking tone. Generic mocking. I feel nothing in response. I tell my soul not to react. With the returning tingle caused by every sensation of being near Lucrezia, I had to restore some sort of control to myself. "I was surprised you didn't insist on going with her and ravish her in the car."  
  
"It's not lustful, it's appreciative." I fine-tuned her comment. "I respect Luce."  
  
"Too much, I'd say." Kozue frowned. "No one wants to be put on a pedestal. No one could survive there because we're all too flawed."  
  
"Listen to my little poet," I kissed the top of Kozue's head as we entered the foyer of our building. She let go of my arm, not afraid of the gazes we always receive from the other tenants. No, she's pulling against the shower of affection. Kozue likes things rough. That's why she chose me as her roommate and goes elsewhere for her current lovers. As much as she'd never want to admit it, one cannot survive having it rough always either.  
  
She immediately entered the room and sat on the floor by the building pile of papers. Some with only one word printed on them. Others almost over flowing with text.  
  
I pulled closed the curtains. Taking a moment to appreciate the city now glowing with electricity as the sun disappears. Wondering where in that scene Luce was driving away. Without me. Still independent. The way I loved her.  
  
Turning back, I sat on the couch and flipped through a magazine that Kozue picked up from some stand on the street. The unfamiliar faces stared back hoping to entice me long enough to consider their product. I glanced up at Kozue as I wondered why she bothered to read these things.  
  
Wondered why I bothered to read them.  
  
Kozue stretched back from where she's accomplished absolutely nothing since we'd gotten home. She turned off the lamp so that the only light is the lava lamp. Making everything that it can reach with it's lesser light shades of violet. Almost blue. Kozue went back to writing. Apparently, that change blossomed her thoughts with fresh ideas.  
  
Undeniably, she's beautiful. That was why I went home with her all of those days. That's how I started seeking her out at the clubs.  
  
But why was I still there with Kozue? While Luce was only a few miles away? I felt urges, the moon inspired insanity to reinitiate the passion that had been brewing all through dinner. I tried not to react, but that only seemed to work with Kozue. Because almost immediately afterward, I clearly remembered the number to reach Luce's parents.  
  
There was always still tomorrow. Tomorrow to find out if the feelings of lust, of appreciation, of butterflies were echoes from the past or promises of the future. Tomorrow to take the dream and reach for that charming smile as I had always intended.  
  
That was what I wanted after all.  
  
Kozue never glanced up as I went to the phone and left a message. A message for Luce to call me. Asking to take more of her time. Asking to speak with her again. Asking her again to smile at me. Initiating chance.  
  
But stories always end  
  
And if you read between the lines  
  
You'll know that I'm just tryin' to understand  
  
The feelin's that you lack  
  
I never thought I could feel this way  
  
And I've got to say that I just don't get it  
  
Kozue:  
  
I'm not sayin' that I love you  
  
I'm not sayin' that I'll care if you love me  
  
I'm not sayin' that I'll care  
  
I'm not sayin' I'll be there when you want me  
  
When I met Sally, she was a left over princess. She'd traveled a ways with love and like a true romantic had done what was best. Done what was best. I never bothered with that. I bothered with coy smiles, with eager touches, with claiming kisses. And she needed the same things that I did. We worked well together.  
  
And it had been marvelous fun opening her heart. Sally had closed down when love escaped her. I thrive on restoring passion. And passion doesn't have to do anything with love. Sally knew that. That was why she never showed passion to her infatuation. She's too noble. Too noble in the sense that she values love.  
  
Me, on the other hand. With me. I expect no one to be noble.  
  
I can't give my heart to you  
  
Or tell you that I'll sing your name up to the sky  
  
I can't lay the promise down  
  
That I'll always be around when you need me  
  
In the end, we don't and we can't love. I've come to believe that. Even family falls into selfishness. My brother was as close to me as anyone. But our parents divided us and when I met Miki again in school. Well, I must have dreamed we had any special connection. I must have imagined the promises.  
  
But it wasn't as if I had kept them either.  
  
And I expected no one to be noble. Which is why I fought with Sally, she held onto her nobility so strongly. Integrity. Peace of mind. The most valuable possessions she could claim.  
  
She told me she loved me once. And that led to our longest separation. It wasn't as easy as she thought. Closeness was not bought or earned. It didn't exist. It didn't exist, because it didn't exist for me.  
  
Now I may not be alone each time you see me  
  
Along the street or in a small cafe  
  
But still I won't deny you or mistreat you  
  
Baby if you let me have my way  
  
So we worked through our differences and built a strange partnership. We lived together but in no committed sense. I more often than not woke up in beds not my own. Truly, the only think Sally could rely on was my half of the bills. The bills that guaranteed that I could watch whatever late night British soap opera I wanted to if I happened to lose a run of poetic thought.  
  
And sometimes, I woke up in her bed. In a tangle of confusion, wondering why I felt an arm embracing me. Wondering why I was warm. Wondering why I slipped out and dressed. Going out. Going away from her.  
  
I also wondered why I found it so easy to speak with the unfamiliar woman that eventually found her way back to Sally. Unfamiliar in the sense that I'd never seen her before. But I had sensed her existence in the conversations I had with Sally, and that particular existence was certainly that specific woman. I almost did know her.  
  
And I had dismissed her. The dark haired woman was oblivious to every sign I read from Sally. Every misplaced breath in her sentences. Every tap of her fork against the diner plate that mimicked Sally's racing heart.  
  
I knew them however. Smugly, I had taken Sally's arm on the way home. Teasing her and trying to elicit a response. That day I felt like reminding Sally that passion was plenty for the likes of us and that together we had known passion a plenty. I wanted to hear her heart race again as her throat hummed.  
  
I'm not sayin' I'll be sorry  
  
For all the things that I might say that make you cry  
  
I can't say I'll always do  
  
The things you want me to  
  
I'm not sayin' I'll be true but I'll try  
  
Her maternal kiss had shocked me.  
  
I had tried to write, to distract myself from the disappointment. Tried to unravel the disappointment. Remind myself that I wasn't seeking love or comfort. That I wanted risk, I wanted nameless lovers, I wanted the games.  
  
I glanced up at her as she closed the curtains, knowing that above all other things Sally was searching out that window for her love. Sally had never stopped knowing what love was. And seeing it in her that day, seeing her express love for that other woman.  
  
I almost grasped what she had been seeking in me all along. Seeking in me when she lost Lucrezia.  
  
I switched off the light. As if it were the source of my new and sudden enlightenment. Hoping to dim it. I didn't want to understand this. Love for me would be ridiculous. Sally did not love me.  
  
Or if she did love me. I had rejected her.  
  
And when I realized who she was calling. Then I knew that I had lost her. Completely.  
  
But at the same time. Since Sally had shown me what true love should look like. How true love should act. I had to let her go.  
  
Ribbon of darkness over me  
  
Since my true love walked out the door  
  
Tears I never had before  
  
Ribbon of darkness over me 


End file.
